Origin of My Birthplace: Knowing God and Connecting to the Source of Life

ORIGIN of MY BIRTHPLACE

ORIGIN of MY BIRTHPLACE

Knowing God and Connecting to the Source of Life

JOHN BLACKWELL

ORIGIN of MY BIRTHPLACE

Knowing God and Connecting to the Source of Life

© 2015 JOHN BLACKWELL. All rights reserved.

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To Philip P. Kerstetter

Mentor and Friend

With Gratitude

CONTENTS

The Dreams

Learning to See

Deep Calling Unto Deep

Involvement and Insight

The Palpable Draw

The Cathedral, the World, and Experience

Knowing Each Other at our Best

Recognizing the Voice

Curiosity

From Curiosity to Mystery

The Expanse

The Genesis Altar

The Altar, the Expanse, and the Image of God

Matrix of Creativity

Communion with the Expanse

Abram’s Knowing

The Key Window

The Faith of Abraham

Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks

The North Windows

Insight from Mark

Insight from Luke

Insight from John

Insight from Matthew

The Origin of My Birthplace

The Labyrinth

Appendix

Obstacles to Primary Knowing

Paths to Primary Knowing

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Books by John Blackwell

The free man is he who wills without arbitrary self-will.

He believes in destiny, and believes that it stands in need of him. It does not keep him in leading-strings, it awaits him, he must go to it, yet does not know where it is to be found. But he knows that he must go out with his whole being. The matter will not turn out according to his decision; but what is to come will come only when he decides on what he is able to will. He must sacrifice his puny, unfree will, that is controlled by things and instincts, to his grand will, which quits defined for destined being. Then, he intervenes no more, but at the same time he does not let things merely happen. He listens to what is emerging from himself, to the course of being in the world; not in order to be supported by it, but in order to bring it to reality as it desires.

—Martin Buber, I and Thou

You must close the eyes and call instead upon another vision which is to be waked within you, a vision which all possess, which few apply.

—Plotinus, Enneads

THE DREAMS

God is also in sleep, and Dreams advise,

Which he hath sent propitious, some great good

Presaging

—Eve, in John Milton, Paradise Lost

Dreams are often the doorways into these other worlds. When a great dream occurs it does not make much sense to look at the individual happenings of a person’s life; rather, it is understood to be a message from a reality that lies outside the normal limits of our senses.

—David Peat, Blackfoot Physics

The dream could not have been more clear. The color blue embodied the smog-free sky. I was above the ocean, in the center of which was a hole that was penetrated by breath, pure white in color. The breath blew in a straight line over the sky-blue ocean, rising slightly as it approached the center. It rose because the waters surrounding the center rose as well, forming a gentle, raised circle that surrounded the center, causing the waters to slope gently towards the center, where the pure white breath penetrated the waters. Lines of white breath sloped gently over the surface of the raised circle, also moving towards the center. But the single line of breath which blew over the waters, rising and then shooting straight down with complete, decisive deliberation, dominated all other movements of breath.

This clear vision in the dream came to me as a single image immediately prior to waking. Some dreams are clear and compelling. This was one of them. When I awoke, I knew in the core of my being that I had been given a gift—this dream. The gift was not something that I had earned. There was nothing good or meritorious in me that made me uniquely eligible for the dream; nor did the dream in any way exalt me or make me a better person. It was the fact that there was nothing meritorious in me that constituted the dream as a gift. It was not a gift to be taken lightly or squandered. This dream was to be treasured—pondered, reflected, understood, acted on, and then pondered again, and yet again. The dream bore the first fruits of primary knowing—a kind of knowing that is direct, in which the knower and the known are in a mutually rewarding symbiotic communion.

The image carried a surplus of ambiguity. It embodied the capacity to receive, bear, and re-generate circumstances, connections, relationships, understanding, interactions, and thinking itself. I can understand that some people will struggle with ambiguity. There are times when all of us crave simple, easy answers. I’ve come to understand that ambiguity can be a great gift. An image from a dream or literature or a painting that is teeming with ambiguity creates in our imaginations a capacity for rich, direct knowing and deep understanding. An image that is fraught with ambiguity is neither limited nor limiting. An image rich in ambiguity provides us with the opportunity to bring our own circumstances, thinking, and action to bear. The ambiguous image becomes a substantive source of transformation and generativity.

The image in my dream was both silent and fertile: its meaning would unfold without effort or exhaustion. The discovery of one meaning would give birth to a communion of meaning that is ever ripe in the unfolding of mystery and discovery.

On the morning of this dream, I was aware that the bright sky-blue ocean of the dream was the deep of my own soul. Equally clear was that the breath that blew over the waters of my soul was the breath of God, which penetrated the center of my being with complete decisiveness. The breath of God went straight into the core of my most true self and was intimately involved with both consciousness and my greater unconscious. Because of the penetrating presence of the breath of God, consciousness and my unconscious formed a creative whole. The connection of consciousness and the unconscious are essential to this creativity. The breath of God was enlivening me from without, forming an inter-connection with inner connections. So enlivening was this interconnection that at the time that was ripe, a well of living water gushed forth from the center of my soul. The dream became a reality of wonder.

This first dream offered a primary image to be observed and understood in a knowing silence. It was complemented by a second dream that when coupled with the first dream constituted the generating origin of my soul. The second dream was pure voice. There was no image, nothing to see. The quality of the voice was rich, husky, and deep—at once firm and kind: I keep taking something fresh to the origin of my birthplace.

The gift of the two dreams presented to my consciousness the opportunity to know, to understand, and to participate in the origin of my soul. The dreams came to me at two different, but complementary times. With them came an intuition—that when I connected these two dreams as an act of imagination, the connection brought me to the origin of my soul. These words were a description of both the way I am to live and a knowing that is primary—direct and completely involved. Their connection is essential; it forms an inner, spiritual, generating whole. My connecting with the origin of my birthplace is a matter of both my responsibility and my will.

As I spent time reflecting on the two dreams, I understood that my birthplace has an origin, a source. This origin is not so much to be located in time and space, but to be identified and known—in acts of conscious willingness. It is also clear that this essentiality is an ever-present generating principle. I am to be aware of it; I am to know it; and I am to bring the world in which I have direct interaction to it. This is my calling; this is my responsibility; this is the reason for my life.

The two dreams are linked in an insight: they are two halves of a reality that is complete in their interconnection. The words, I keep taking something fresh to the origin of my birthplace, are the verbal complement to the image of the pure white breath of God blowing over the sky-blue ocean of my being and penetrating deep into the center, where it creates an expanse of light, life, and generativity. I learned that it is my responsibility to know the essential connection between these two dreams and the communion to which they give birth. It is my calling to take something fresh to the origin of my birthplace. This image is the origin of my birthplace. It is the inner place to which I can take the substance of life and connect it with creativity and generativity.

LEARNING TO SEE

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open and show riches

Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,

I cried to dream again.

—William Shakespeare, The Tempest

All knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.

—Leonardo da Vinci

If I have learned anything in life, I have learned the importance of learning to see. I have also learned that learning to see takes time. In my case, it takes far more time than I would ever wish. I am not burdened with patience, and I can be critically impatient with myself. There are times I think myself the world’s slowest learner and latest bloomer.

The figure who convinced me of the importance of learning to see was the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo (1452–1519). For him, learning to see was everything. His skill as an artist was founded on his ability to see. Leonardo had the remarkable ability to see whatever was in front of him. When I started reading Leonardo’s biography, or looking at his astonishing paintings, I realized how completely underdeveloped was my ability to see. Leonardo was a genius in many respects, all of which seem to be founded on his uncanny ability actually to see.

There is a second genius who made an important impact on my understanding of the importance of learning to see, and that was Mark. In the eighth chapter, Mark has the first of his two stories of the Healing of the Blind Man. The story is as peculiar as it is straightforward. Some people brought a blind man to Jesus and begged Jesus to touch the man. Jesus removed the blind man from the crowd, after which he spit on his eyes. Jesus then asked the man if he could see. The man reported that he could see people, but they looked like trees walking. Jesus then touched the man’s eyes. He was finally able to see everything with clarity.

There is much to observe in this story, and the observations are all important. One of the things we notice is that the first two interactions between the man and Jesus (taking the man away from other people and spitting on his eyes) did not produce the effect of clear eyesight. A third interaction was necessary. Among other things Mark shows us is that learning to see takes time.

I begin with these insights from Leonardo and Mark for two reasons. The first is that my own learning to see has taken an enormous amount of time. There have been occasions when my learning has been painfully slow. I wish I were a quicker study. I have nothing but admiration for those who are blessed with seemingly effortless insight—especially when it comes to recognizing the most important things that are emerging. The second is that great literature, including the Bible, is about learning to see. This is especially true with the Gospels and the book of Genesis. Among other things, these important books involve learning to recognize the presence of God and what is emerging and unfolding in the world.

The reason I begin with a word about the development of my own observational abilities is that a friend, Ryan Fields, who looked at the first draft of my manuscript, asked me about the order of the essays I have written. I told Ryan that I have tried to make each essay stand on its own so that it could be read and understood by itself. The editor Roy Carlisle taught me that today’s reader wants to be able to open a book and start anywhere, picking and choosing as she goes. This means that it is important that each essay be complete. I have tried to heed Roy’s wisdom. I then shared with Ryan that the order of the essays reflects ways in which my own thinking and observational abilities have developed over the years. Another way to put this is that the order of the essays reflects the ways things have emerged in my own imagination.

When I started reading the American author Flannery O’Connor (first her stories and novels, and then her essays), I began to realize that she was not only bearing witness to what she was seeing, including the unfolding of the presence and power of God, but she was also giving her readers the eyes with which to recognize the emerging and unfolding of presence and meaning in our lives. At the time I was reading Flannery O’Connor, I also started reading Joseph Jaworski, who was writing about the predictable miracles that were unfolding in his life. This strengthened my desire and determination to be able to answer the question, how do I recognize the presence of the power of God, including what is emerging and unfolding? How do I learn to see? And how does my ability to see lead to understanding and knowing what is authentic and direct?

What follows is one result of my effort to see and to understand what is emerging right before our eyes.

DEEP CALLING UNTO DEEP

Things of importance come to me not in philosophical reflections, but in flashes, in sudden perceptions of the unseen, indeed I suppose I must say in visions. It is not, I assure you, because I have a screw loose, but because my arrangement of screws is wholly personal.

—Robertson Davies, The Novelist and Magic

You can observe a lot by watching.

—Yogi Berra

When it came to a sense of wonder and mystery, my maternal grandmother, Leta, was a great influence. One of my earliest memories of her influence involved a circle meeting of twelve or so women in my grandmother’s living room. At the end of the meeting, the women joined hands in a circle to pray. I was included. As I listened to their prayer, I heard them say, And Leta is not in temptation. This is my earliest memory of The Lord’s Prayer.

The following Sunday, my grandmother took me to Asbury Methodist Church in San Diego. I sat with one of her friends because my grandmother sang in the choir, which processed down the center aisle at the beginning of the service. I will never forget how much I held the procession in awe: my